7-month-old boy dies after being left in car

Tragedy is first of year in the area, one of a dozen so far across nation

A 7-month-old boy died Friday after his father forgot to drop him off with a babysitter and instead left him for about 10 hours in his car outside his northwest Houston business — the region’s first hot car death of the summer.

The 36-year-old father dropped his other two children off at day care and then arrived around 9:30 a.m. at his workplace in the 7900 block of Northcourt, according to police.

When his wife called asking the whereabouts of the baby, the father went out to the vehicle around 7:30 p.m. and found the child unresponsive in the car seat.

Paramedics pronounced the baby dead, according to police. Investigators interviewed the father, contacted the Harris County District Attorney’s Office and released the man pending investigation. The case likely will be referred to a Harris County grand jury.

The baby is among a dozen who have died this year from heatstroke inside a car, according to Kids and Cars, an organization that collects data on child fatalities. Last year, 39 children died from heatstroke inside a car, and 810 children have died from heatstroke inside vehicles across the country since 1994, according to Kids and Cars.

The case is all too familiar for Kristie ReevesCavaliero. Just six years ago, she and her husband, Brett, faced a similar tragedy when he left their

1-year-old daughter in the back seat.

Normally the couple would be woken up by their daughter, Sophia Rayne, around 5 a.m. because she would want her morning feeding. But that morning, their house in Austin stayed silent.

“For some strange reason, she didn’t wake up,” Kristie said. “The entire household overslept. The whole morning was completely chaotic, so we were rushing trying to get her to school.” Ray Ray’s Pledge

Kristie remembers walking to the truck with her husband and putting her daughter, whom they called “Ray Ray,” inside. She was wearing a flowered dress for ”Tropical day” at school.

The couple kissed the child and told her they loved her.

On the way to day care, Kristie said her husband took a different turn and drove directly to his office, leaving her in the car when he got to work.

“For reasons that we don’t know, he took a righthand turn instead of a left turn,” Kristie said. “With her in the backseat in a rearfacing car seat, he didn’t see her.”

It wasn’t until a few hours later when Kristie met up with her husband for a lunch date that he remembered he never dropped the daughter off.

In the nights following Sophia’s death, she couldn’t sleep and would spend them researching similar incidents. This led to the creation of Ray Ray’s Pledge in June 2011, a program named after her daughter that educates parents on ways to prevent hot car deaths. The pledge encourages parents and child care providers to confirm the child was dropped off at school or day care through phone calls.

Kristie now uses apps on her phone to make sure she or her husband has dropped off their 4-year-old twins at preschool.

Kids and Cars advises parents to always look in the back seat before locking their vehicles. They also should put something in the back seat that they’ll need, such as a cellphone, employee ID or briefcase. More than 55 percent of parents who left their child in a car did so unknowingly, according to Kids and Cars.

A child’s body overheats three to five times faster than an adult body, and a car’s temperature can reach 125 degrees in minutes.

Additionally, 80 percent of temperature increases inside a vehicle happen within the first 10 minutes. Parker County deaths

Two young children, a 2-year-old and a 16-monthold, were found dead inside a car last month in Parker County in North Texas. The 25-year-old mother found the children playing in the car and told investigators she left them there to teach them a lesson, authorities reported.

The mom was charged Friday with two first-degree felony counts of injury to a child causing serious bodily injury.

Kristie said that before her tragedy, she never would have considered it possible for a parent to leave a child in the car. Now she knows it’s all too common across the country.

“We would say of course we wouldn’t (forget her) because we would never intentionally leave our baby,” Kristie said. “We had never heard of it being possible to forget.”